Speaker 1: Up next, The Truth with Lisa Welcome back to the
Speaker 1: Truth with Lisa Booth. So, what does the future of
Speaker 1: the Republican Party look like after Joe Biden's presidency? What
Speaker 1: does the future of the country look like? I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get those answers for you from the former Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House, Knook Gingrich. He's also the author of the
Speaker 1: book Beyond Biden, where he charts the path forward for us.
Speaker 1: He's a historian. He's also a former professor as well.
Speaker 1: You know, we look around right now in the future
Speaker 1: seems pretty parallels. It seems bleak. There's a lot to
Speaker 1: be concerned with, but Speaker says, to not lose hope.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a man who wrote the Contract
Speaker 1: with America where he outlined to voters what a Republican
Speaker 1: majority would do in n It was a bold move,
Speaker 1: and voters rewarded him with the Republican majority in both
Speaker 1: the House and the Senate. I'm really looking forward to
Speaker 1: getting his wisdom and his perspective on where we are
Speaker 1: now and what the future holds. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a great show with a great guy. Stay tuned. So
Speaker 1: I am really excited about having this next guest on
Speaker 1: this show because you know, right now, everything seems pretty perilous,
Speaker 1: it seems pretty daunting. So I am looking forward to
Speaker 1: having this conversation with Speaker Nuke Ingridge, who is a
Speaker 1: student of history, a lover of history, former Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House, someone to offer us some wisdom and reflection
Speaker 1: about where we are now comparatively speaking to before. He's
Speaker 1: also the author of the book Beyond Biden. Speaker, it
Speaker 1: is an honor to have you on the show. Well, listen,
Speaker 1: it's great to be with you, and you've been doing
Speaker 1: such an amazing job hosting your programming. But you've done
Speaker 1: that with everything you've done in life. So I thought
Speaker 1: this would be a very challenging and exciting experience because
Speaker 1: I know both how smart you are and how much
Speaker 1: energy you have, and I look forward to it, and
Speaker 1: I think in a sense, Beyond Biden is really directed
Speaker 1: at your generation and younger people even than you, like
Speaker 1: my grandchildren, uh to say, hey, you know, we can
Speaker 1: rebuild this country. You know, never never, as Churchill once said,
Speaker 1: never give up. So I'm delighted have a chance to
Speaker 1: talk about where we're gonna be once Biden disappears into history.
Speaker 1: And so where will we be I mean, looking beyond Biden.
Speaker 1: You know what does that look like? Well, I think
Speaker 1: in a funny kind of way, by being so militant
Speaker 1: and so aggressive, the big government socialists have actually created
Speaker 1: an environment where the average American has been forced to
Speaker 1: think about what do they really believe? And the result
Speaker 1: has been there shocked to discover they're really much more
Speaker 1: conservative than they thought they were. And that particularly conserving
Speaker 1: the sense that they don't want a gigantic federal government.
Speaker 1: They don't want inflation, they don't want big bureaucracies dictating
Speaker 1: their lives. They don't want Paul politicians being hypocrites and
Speaker 1: setting up one set of rules for the average person
Speaker 1: in a different set of rules for the powerful. UH.
Speaker 1: And so in a way, the conversation we're having as
Speaker 1: a country is really clarifying who we are UH and
Speaker 1: what I think will turn out to be very positive.
Speaker 1: At the same time, when you look, for example, at
Speaker 1: the states that have Republican governors who are applying common sense,
Speaker 1: things are working. The schools are better, the roads are better,
Speaker 1: the jobs are better. If you look at the I
Speaker 1: think of the top ten states and employment, all ten
Speaker 1: have Republican governors, and nine have Republican state legislatures, and
Speaker 1: they're just they're applying a different set of rules than
Speaker 1: say California or Illinois or New York, all of which
Speaker 1: are dominated by the unions and by politicians and by
Speaker 1: people who believe in big government bureaucracy, and all of
Speaker 1: which are in that sense falling behind. Do you think
Speaker 1: American or enough Americans are awake to that? To what
Speaker 1: you just laid out, well, appalling date is pretty devastating.
Speaker 1: I mean when if you ask people do you think
Speaker 1: this is working? You get an overwhelming no. If you
Speaker 1: ask people, uh, do you favor big government socialism? The
Speaker 1: biggest number we've gotten is eight. Uh. And Rasmussen pretty
Speaker 1: well tracks the same thing. So when people think about it, uh,
Speaker 1: given what's happening, particularly in Washington, but also in Sacramento
Speaker 1: and Albany and Springfield, Uh, people are saying no, that
Speaker 1: that's not what they want. And I think that's gonna
Speaker 1: have in two thousand twenty two and two thousand twenty four,
Speaker 1: almost a tsunami. In fact, in one of my newsletters,
Speaker 1: which I do three a week at English Street sixty
Speaker 1: that are free and one of them was on the
Speaker 1: coming tsunami, because I think it's gonna be bigger than
Speaker 1: a tide. I think that, uh, the rejection is going
Speaker 1: to be breathtaking, and the number of people left wing
Speaker 1: Democrats who lose their seats is going to be far
Speaker 1: more than anybody in Washington thinks today. But do you
Speaker 1: think Democrats will allow for that? Because what we have
Speaker 1: seen with the left is a changing of the rules.
Speaker 1: You know, if they if things aren't going their way,
Speaker 1: they change the rules. We saw this before election, using
Speaker 1: the pandemic, using COVID to lean on mail and ballots.
Speaker 1: We've seen this with them trying to push forward with nationalizing,
Speaker 1: federalizing or elections. I mean, what do you think we
Speaker 1: can expect from them on that front? Well, I think
Speaker 1: to the degree they can cheat, they will uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's no accident that the New York City Council has
Speaker 1: uh is talking about letting eight hundred thousand people who
Speaker 1: are here illegally vote in New York City elections. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think there's a real sense on the left that
Speaker 1: if the election is limited to legal American citizens that
Speaker 1: they're in real trouble. So they both try to vote
Speaker 1: people who are not alive, or people who don't exist,
Speaker 1: or people who vote multiple times, and they try to
Speaker 1: find ways to widen to people who are not legally American.
Speaker 1: You know, you had things like and I think it
Speaker 1: was Wisconsin, the Service Employees Union had a nursing home
Speaker 1: where they provided all the workers, and the workers were
Speaker 1: going around the people who had Alzheimer's and other challenges
Speaker 1: and getting them to vote, even though it was clear
Speaker 1: they had no idea who they were voting for. And
Speaker 1: so those particular unionized workers were able in effect to
Speaker 1: vote ten or twenty or thirty times by getting people
Speaker 1: who were technically available with It's very different if you're
Speaker 1: if your relative comes in to see you, and your
Speaker 1: relative knows what you believe, uh, there's at least some
Speaker 1: grounds for a lot of having you vote. But if
Speaker 1: somebody comes in who knows that they want to elect
Speaker 1: a big government, the Democrat and that are gonna exploit
Speaker 1: you because you now cognitively don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: There's something profoundly wrong with that. And that's what was
Speaker 1: happening in that particular nursing home in Wisconsin, and of
Speaker 1: course in places like California, they were just making up
Speaker 1: the ballots. I mean, there's no question that they were stuffing.
Speaker 1: One of the great breakthroughs in the Virginia governor's race
Speaker 1: was they somehow and I don't know how they did this,
Speaker 1: but they somehow got the Democratic governor and the Democratic
Speaker 1: Secretary of State to agree that they would count all
Speaker 1: of the mail in ballots and all of the absentee
Speaker 1: ballots before they counted the people who voted an election day.
Speaker 1: And the reason that mattered was the event if you
Speaker 1: were suddenly losing that that you were not in a
Speaker 1: position to go back out and manufacture additional ballots because
Speaker 1: you've already voted them all. Had that happened, for example,
Speaker 1: in Minnesota a few years back, we would have re
Speaker 1: elected the Republican senator who was a add on election
Speaker 1: night until magically, early in the morning, somebody found two
Speaker 1: precincts in the trunk of a car, and those supercincts
Speaker 1: happen to be overwhelmingly Democrat, and they happen to show
Speaker 1: up at just the right moment, and so the Democrat
Speaker 1: won by a really narrow margin. Well, what they did
Speaker 1: in Virginia blocked all that sort of game playing, and
Speaker 1: I think you'll see more and more states insisting on
Speaker 1: honest elections. And when when we do polls five or
Speaker 1: eighty seven or sun the American people want you to
Speaker 1: show your identity, wants you to prove you are who
Speaker 1: you are. Once it restricted only to legal American citizens.
Speaker 1: So I think even there, uh get, it's getting harder
Speaker 1: and harder for the left to cheat. Well. I definitely
Speaker 1: think the election woke a lot of Americans up in
Speaker 1: that regard of just saying, hey, look is this fairer?
Speaker 1: What are we doing? You know, what can we do
Speaker 1: to sort of safeguard or elections? You know, sir? It's
Speaker 1: one of those things that you look at today's dynamics
Speaker 1: with politics right, and there used to be conservatives who
Speaker 1: would say, oh, the left evil, and I used to
Speaker 1: be like, no, you know, we have political differences. But
Speaker 1: but now it's like, you look at what they did
Speaker 1: to Kavanaugh, you look at what they tried doing to
Speaker 1: Kyle Rittenhouse. It's there seems to be a different dynamic
Speaker 1: at play where it's not just simple political disagreements. The
Speaker 1: left wants to destroy the lives of their political opponents.
Speaker 1: Is that new? I think the depth of the bitterness
Speaker 1: is new. I think, you know, we we have. It's
Speaker 1: kind of ironic the very people who worried about um
Speaker 1: communists being smeared in the nineteen fifties now enthusiastically run
Speaker 1: around smearing people. But there's always been a certain amount
Speaker 1: of that kind of toughness in American politics, but it's
Speaker 1: gone to a new level of not just attacking you,
Speaker 1: but attacking your family, almost trying to make it too
Speaker 1: painful for decent people to be involved in public life,
Speaker 1: basically saying no, you do this and your whole your
Speaker 1: whole family is going to pay a huge penalty psychologically. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's tragic that they have that
Speaker 1: kind of attitude. So I would say that, um, we
Speaker 1: are in a time when the bitterness of the left,
Speaker 1: the degree to which they dislike America, the degree to
Speaker 1: which they think that the average American is beneath contempted.
Speaker 1: It's it's the the whole Hillary Clinton attitude. It's the incorrigibles.
Speaker 1: It said, as somebody one Democrats said, those people who
Speaker 1: smell like they went to Walmart. Um, you know which
Speaker 1: that happens, by the way, to have almost every American
Speaker 1: go to it at least once a year. But it's
Speaker 1: just this whole contempt for normal people. And part of
Speaker 1: what it's done is it's driven everyday working Democrats out
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. I mean, the the steady stream,
Speaker 1: whether you're Hispanic or black, or white or Asian American,
Speaker 1: the steady stream away from uh, big government, socialism and
Speaker 1: away from left wing Democrats is amazing. That's why recently
Speaker 1: we won a special election in San Antonio for a
Speaker 1: state legislative seat. It was a district that was seventy Hispanic,
Speaker 1: but in fact we were carrying Hispanics. And as it's
Speaker 1: one of the great ironies, the left has always counted
Speaker 1: on what they would have thought of as as people
Speaker 1: of color. Well, it turns out that people of color
Speaker 1: aren't stupid, uh, and that people of color are increasingly
Speaker 1: voting against high taxes, big bureaucracy, and radical social programs. Well,
Speaker 1: and that was actually one of the things I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about, because to your point, we've seen
Speaker 1: this realignment happened, particularly under Trump, of this diverse Republican
Speaker 1: party that represents the working class, Democrats have become the
Speaker 1: party of the coastal elites. Was that just President Trump
Speaker 1: or or how did that realignment happen? You know what's
Speaker 1: behind that? Well, it wou'd have been building for a
Speaker 1: long time. I found, in preparing to think about the
Speaker 1: next few years that it was very helpful to go
Speaker 1: back and reread Theodore Whites Making the President of nineteen
Speaker 1: and Making of the President in nineteen seventy two and
Speaker 1: in sixty eight. White talks at length, both about the
Speaker 1: revolutionary mood. Remember remember, Um, you wouldn't because you're too young,
Speaker 1: but so I'll tell you. Uh. In in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: we had twenty five hundred bombings or nine seventy two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred in the United States. We had a scientist
Speaker 1: at the University of Wisconsin killed by a bomb. We
Speaker 1: had a historian at Columbia University have his life's work
Speaker 1: destroyed by a mob. I mean, we were very close
Speaker 1: to the left going crazy. And in fact, the current
Speaker 1: UH prosecutor, who was actually a non prosecutor UH in
Speaker 1: San Francisco as a communist UH. His father is still
Speaker 1: in prison with a life sentence for having killed a
Speaker 1: Brinx guard truck, and the guy who guarded the truck
Speaker 1: and his wife spent years in prison. UH. Lead leading
Speaker 1: his son to be anti prison as opposed to anti
Speaker 1: killing brink guardsen. Uh And, but but that was a
Speaker 1: robbery to fund the revolution of sort of an imitation
Speaker 1: of Joseph Stalin's early years in robbing banks to fund
Speaker 1: the Communist Party in Russia. Uh And we've forgotten how
Speaker 1: much that was in ninety two or another. In the
Speaker 1: sixty eight book, White has a chapter on the media
Speaker 1: which is really worth reading, and it really sounds like today.
Speaker 1: I mean, the biases, the the the anti Republican, anti conservative,
Speaker 1: anti American traits of the New York Times, the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: they're all right there in ninety In the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: two book, he explains that George McGovern is has a
Speaker 1: huge problem with the left, and and the line he used,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really helpful, is that the liberal
Speaker 1: ideology had become a liberal theology and you could no
Speaker 1: longer debated, argue about it, modify it, because to do
Speaker 1: so with an act of heresy had become a basically
Speaker 1: a quasi religious movement. No this iso. So what you've
Speaker 1: seen is the steady growth and evolution on college campuses,
Speaker 1: in the news media, and the bureaucracy of people who
Speaker 1: have been absorbed into this new theology. Uh. And if
Speaker 1: you think about it, if you if you think of
Speaker 1: this as a war of religion between a secular left
Speaker 1: wing anti you know, anti Christian, anti jew, uh, anti American, uh,
Speaker 1: anti national religion and the rest of us, then they
Speaker 1: have the same fanaticism that you would have gotten from
Speaker 1: the French Revolution, or from the Russian Revolution or the
Speaker 1: Chinese Revolution. They're remarkable parallels between They're at a two
Speaker 1: and the way Mao operated in the Cultural Revolution. And
Speaker 1: on my podcast at news World, I've interviewed Chinese Americans.
Speaker 1: One of them was a woman who literally was in
Speaker 1: the Cultural Revolution under Mao, was a very young girl
Speaker 1: and now is fighting about the schools in Loudon County, Virginia,
Speaker 1: which she says have taken on Maoist behavior. Uh. She said,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm back in China again. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I think that that's real. I think that the left
Speaker 1: here has the same revolutionary tendencies that you would have
Speaker 1: seen in Paris in seventeen ninety two, or in Moscow
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, or in China up to today, ping
Speaker 1: in many ways as the new mau Well and I
Speaker 1: also interviewed to your point, I interviewed Maximo Alverez to
Speaker 1: escape Cuba. Who are the same sentiments that you just
Speaker 1: laid out of a concern that we're turning into Cuba
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, you know, turning into China. Why does
Speaker 1: so many people on the left hate America? That the
Speaker 1: one of the one I used to be a college teacher,
Speaker 1: and one of the characteristics of college teachers is that
Speaker 1: they read lots of books. They walk into classrooms where
Speaker 1: all of these eager young students stare at them, uh
Speaker 1: slavishly because actually they can flunk them. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are there are a few places of untested power comparable
Speaker 1: to being a professor in a college classroom. And so
Speaker 1: of course the students who are relatively clever all suck
Speaker 1: up to them and go, oh, this is such a
Speaker 1: brilliant lecture. I can't tell you how much it meant
Speaker 1: to me to be able to sit here and learn
Speaker 1: from a genius like you. Well, they believe all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know they some of them actually work as
Speaker 1: much as fifteen hours a week. I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: amazing project. Uh and uh. In fact, a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine used to explain to his working class relatives
Speaker 1: that he'd gotten a PhD because he only worked fifteen
Speaker 1: hours a week, and they said, ah, you know, you're
Speaker 1: ripping off the man. We got it, you're really clever, obvious.
Speaker 1: That sort of fit their industrial man ality. Uh. But
Speaker 1: the fact is they didn't look around. They realize. You know,
Speaker 1: people like Bill Gates has more money than they do. Well,
Speaker 1: he doesn't deserve to have more money than they do.
Speaker 1: And the guy who is the local lawyer who drives
Speaker 1: a better car than they do, well, why does he that?
Speaker 1: I mean, what does he do? He just he just
Speaker 1: does law, whereas I am a brilliant genius who does knowledge.
Speaker 1: And I think that the level of envy is very
Speaker 1: real and very deep. The other factor that we have
Speaker 1: just have to own up to is our immigration policy
Speaker 1: allows people to come here who hate us. Uh, they
Speaker 1: hated us back when they were home. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: always amazed, for example, when somebody who has migrated from
Speaker 1: say Somalia, tells us how bad America is. I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'm a very happy. We gotta have
Speaker 1: a policy of saying we will always pay for a
Speaker 1: return ticket if you'd like to go home. Um. But
Speaker 1: in addition, you look at a woman, a Somali woman
Speaker 1: in America and a Somali woman so in Mogadishu. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have to be literally crazy to think that you're
Speaker 1: better off in Mogadishu. But they come here, they get
Speaker 1: to be elected to Congress, and suddenly they disliked the
Speaker 1: country which has liberated them and protected them and given
Speaker 1: them status. Uh. And you have to think, as Glad
Speaker 1: Sad who wrote a great book on this about claiming
Speaker 1: that the left wingism is actually a virus and you
Speaker 1: can't deal with them rationally because these are people whose
Speaker 1: brains are now occupied by this virus. You know. Ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot he says. You know, when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with somebody who refuses to admit that you have a
Speaker 1: higher income in the US than in Somalia, you're not
Speaker 1: having an argument. You're dealing with a person who was
Speaker 1: a mental illness. Uh. And I think that that is
Speaker 1: sort of spread on the left. And because it's a
Speaker 1: some it is a secular religious movement. If you don't
Speaker 1: believe that, you will be coerced and punished. And and
Speaker 1: it's it's this this attitude which has allowed Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: to run a dictatorship with an amazingly narrow margin. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't as a former Speaker of the House, I would
Speaker 1: not have thought it possible to do the things that
Speaker 1: she does. I just think that it's she she gets.
Speaker 1: In fact that I've suggested that they should that the
Speaker 1: lemming should replace the donkey as the symbol of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party because she gets people to walk off the
Speaker 1: cliffs suicidally on a regular basis. She has a very
Speaker 1: narrow margin, and probably thirty or forty of her members
Speaker 1: are literally committing suicide every time they vote with her,
Speaker 1: and they do it anyway, I think because being kneecapped
Speaker 1: by Pelosi this week is a more certain punishment than
Speaker 1: being fired in November of two thousand two. Quick commercial break,
Speaker 1: more with Speaker Gangridge on the other side. One thing
Speaker 1: that really concerns me about where we are now is
Speaker 1: we seen this government reaction to COVID and leaders not
Speaker 1: just in the United States but around the world using
Speaker 1: it to reshape society, reshape the role of the federal
Speaker 1: government in our lives. Are just the government in general,
Speaker 1: and like the beauty of America as we've been a
Speaker 1: constitutional republic, self governance, putting power in the hands of
Speaker 1: the people, and it seems like that power has been
Speaker 1: taken away. How do we regain that What does that
Speaker 1: mean for the country moving forward? I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine how we take that power back when
Speaker 1: it's been taken so egregiously. Well, I think in a
Speaker 1: lot of states, though you're seeing that happen again, Republican
Speaker 1: governors as a group, not all of them, but virtually
Speaker 1: all of them are much more inclined to allow people
Speaker 1: to live their own lives and run their own risk.
Speaker 1: If you if you compare Florida in Texas with New
Speaker 1: York and California, there is just an astonishing difference in
Speaker 1: attitude in the governing people. UM. I do think that
Speaker 1: across the planet. Uh, the bureaucrats and the politicians saw
Speaker 1: this as a great opportunity uh to be brilliant, and
Speaker 1: and they would have said they were doing what science
Speaker 1: told them to. The truth is, and I'm in the
Speaker 1: middle of reading a whole series of books right now
Speaker 1: on on the COVID epidemic and how it happened, what
Speaker 1: was done, etcetera. The truth is, first of all, we
Speaker 1: have a terrible incompetent, obsolete public health system. I'm embarrassed
Speaker 1: by how bad the Center for Disease Control has become.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a politically dominated, timid, and ineffective bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: which actually made the COVID epidemics substantially worse in the
Speaker 1: United States by the bureaucracy and their attitudes. I think
Speaker 1: that it's clear that politicians like Cuomo killed thousands of
Speaker 1: people unnecessarily by doing exactly the opposite of what they
Speaker 1: should have done, putting people with COVID in the nursing
Speaker 1: homes instead of keeping them out of the nursing homes.
Speaker 1: I think in New York, for example, we're going to
Speaker 1: find that literally thousands, minimum of seven thousand, maybe as
Speaker 1: many as fifteen thousand senior citizens were killed by Andrew
Speaker 1: Cuomo's policies, just plain killed. Uh and uh So in
Speaker 1: that sense, I think it's it's bad. I also think
Speaker 1: that on a worldwide basis, and this is partly the
Speaker 1: doing of Bill Gates, who has been funding programs all
Speaker 1: over the planet that are on the surface philanthropic and
Speaker 1: positive and designed to wipe out tuberculosis or wipe out
Speaker 1: malaria or whatever. They're all sound great, but what he's
Speaker 1: done in the process has created a worldwide group think,
Speaker 1: and so across the planet people decided that they would
Speaker 1: lock down. Now it's interesting if you go to Japan, Korea, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and Singapore, they followed very strict programs that are classic
Speaker 1: and how you deal with epidemics. They had huge amounts
Speaker 1: of testing UH and they tracked people UH and and
Speaker 1: found out exactly who had the disease isolated only the
Speaker 1: people with the disease kept their economies up and running UH.
Speaker 1: And as a result, I think in Taiwan they've they've
Speaker 1: had something like don't don't take this number literally because
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: but I think they've had something like eighty people die
Speaker 1: and maybe nine hundred who got COVID because they just
Speaker 1: they trapped the virus as fast as they could find it,
Speaker 1: didn't let those particular people spread it, and so the
Speaker 1: virus died out. UH. Singapore was similar. South Korea has
Speaker 1: done a great job, Japan did a pretty good job,
Speaker 1: not quite as good, but all four of those countries
Speaker 1: are radically better than the western countries at solving this
Speaker 1: and by the way. It's not purely East and West.
Speaker 1: The Chinese have done a terrible job and uh simply
Speaker 1: lie about how many Chinese have died and how many
Speaker 1: have gotten COVID because it's been much much worse than
Speaker 1: they're willing although the challenges that uh, you know, COVID
Speaker 1: is probably not going away. So you could argue that
Speaker 1: maybe Sweden had the best route where they sort of
Speaker 1: just you know, allowed COVID to do as a virus does,
Speaker 1: as it's going to continue to do, and as opposed to,
Speaker 1: you know, we sort of prolonged what is inevitably going
Speaker 1: to happen in terms of you know, we're all probably
Speaker 1: going to get COVID at some point, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: better to to build up your immune system. But you know, regardless,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's not just the size of the
Speaker 1: government in terms of how large governments have grown throughout COVID.
Speaker 1: It's also corporations and the crushing of small businesses and
Speaker 1: the crushing of businesses that are more decentralized. It's the
Speaker 1: centralization of corporations. It's big tech and the growth of
Speaker 1: big tech and the power that has over our lives.
Speaker 1: So how do Republicans, which they do with that, which
Speaker 1: they do with these corporations who have and so big,
Speaker 1: so powerful, with big tech that has gotten so big
Speaker 1: and so powerful. Well, look, I think excuse me, I
Speaker 1: think we should be deeply in favor of genuine free
Speaker 1: enterprise and genuine entrepreneurship, starting with small businesses. And we
Speaker 1: should be against chrony capitalism and which when when you
Speaker 1: see a corporation which values its lobbyists more than its engineers,
Speaker 1: you know you're dealing with chrony capitalism. And they tend
Speaker 1: to underperform over price, and they tend to cheat in
Speaker 1: order to crowd out younger, smaller, newer competitors. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so I think we should be in favor of the
Speaker 1: competition and when and you would have a dramatic turnover
Speaker 1: if you go back and look at who were the
Speaker 1: biggest companies in the stock market in it's astonishing how
Speaker 1: few of them are still around because in a really competitive,
Speaker 1: dynamic society, there are constantly new people, you know, the
Speaker 1: the Elon Musk of the world, uh, who are inventing
Speaker 1: new things and creating new things, and you want them
Speaker 1: to grow. I mean, we we want not as small businesses,
Speaker 1: we want lots of baby businesses that are capable of
Speaker 1: growing into giants. And then we want to continuous what
Speaker 1: Shompeter called creative destruction. We want a continuous pressure of
Speaker 1: the next wave of new ideas in the next wave
Speaker 1: of new businesses. So I don't object to a Bill
Speaker 1: Gates or Steve Jobs, object to them then trying to
Speaker 1: pull up the drawbridge and block anybody else from competing
Speaker 1: with them. Adam Smith and the Wealth of Nations warned
Speaker 1: that any time businessmen get together for lunch is a
Speaker 1: conspiracy against the consumer. And there's something to that. I mean,
Speaker 1: and in government contracting maybe among the worst. In government
Speaker 1: rules and regulations. If you watch, you'll notice that the
Speaker 1: really big companies love regulations because they have a big
Speaker 1: enough law department and a big enough clerical force that
Speaker 1: they can deal with the regulations. And they know that
Speaker 1: it will have much greater cost per dollar on the
Speaker 1: small companies that are trying to compete with them. So
Speaker 1: you have to always be careful and ask is this
Speaker 1: regulation necessary for the public or is it a gimmick
Speaker 1: by which the current dominant companies crowd out and weaken
Speaker 1: their potential competitors. But I think we should not be
Speaker 1: the you know, the movement or the party of big
Speaker 1: corporations in bed with government. We should be the movement
Speaker 1: and the party in favor of entrepreneurs and startups and
Speaker 1: small businesses and baby businesses. And we should be constantly
Speaker 1: looking at the tax code and the regulatory code to
Speaker 1: make sure that it's not propping up the big guys inefficiently,
Speaker 1: but rather as maximizing the opportunity to compete and to grow.
Speaker 1: But are some of these companies too big to compete with?
Speaker 1: Because we've almost had an artificial resetting of the economy
Speaker 1: with the government coming in and essentially you know, dictating
Speaker 1: the terms by destroying so many businesses in America. So
Speaker 1: are some of these companies too big to just simply
Speaker 1: compete with. They're not too big to compete with as
Speaker 1: long as you insist the competition as possible. They're too
Speaker 1: big to compete with if they can go out in
Speaker 1: a predatory way and destroy you. And so I think
Speaker 1: you've got to look. You've got to look for what
Speaker 1: their behaviors are. But as a general rule, if you
Speaker 1: go back and look at the biggest companies of with
Speaker 1: the possible exception of UH, of Exxon, which was standard oil. Uh.
Speaker 1: Almost none of them have, in fact, in the long run,
Speaker 1: retained that ability because other competitors come along, New technologies
Speaker 1: come along. Things that once work no longer work. Uh.
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurs grow older, and the genius they had when they
Speaker 1: were thirty they don't have when they're seventy. I mean
Speaker 1: some do. There are occasions where you have like Thomas Edison,
Speaker 1: who was inventing his whole life and probably invented at
Speaker 1: one point, I think six percent of the economy was
Speaker 1: it was Thomas Edison's personal inventions, um, like the electric
Speaker 1: light in the motion picture. But I think as a
Speaker 1: general principle, Uh, even those folks that are gradually replaced
Speaker 1: because people come along. You know, Vaudeville faced movies, and
Speaker 1: about the time movies were dominant, they faced radio, and
Speaker 1: then they faced television. Uh. And now of course you
Speaker 1: have video, and you have you have cable, and you
Speaker 1: have streaming, and you have this explosion of opportunities whereas
Speaker 1: you know, seventy or eight years ago, you had at
Speaker 1: one point you had one one nationwide channel which was NBC. UH,
Speaker 1: And the world just changed. So I'm I really believe
Speaker 1: that entrepreneurs and technology are constant drivers unless they're cut off. Now,
Speaker 1: they can be cut off because the bigs come in
Speaker 1: and buy them, or they can be cut off because
Speaker 1: government sets up tax policy, or sets up regulatory policy,
Speaker 1: or sets up contracts. I mean, if if government is
Speaker 1: only willing to contract with Boeing and Lockheed Martin and
Speaker 1: and companies of that size, then the smallest artups, who
Speaker 1: often have better solutions at lower cost, can't even get
Speaker 1: into the game. Well and and earlier on the show,
Speaker 1: I said student of history, but I meant just lover
Speaker 1: of history. You're you're an actual historian and a former professor.
Speaker 1: But in addition to that, everyone knows you as being
Speaker 1: the former you know, Speaker of the House, and you
Speaker 1: you were the driver behind, the mastermind, the brainchild of
Speaker 1: the contract with America in when you're a minority whip.
Speaker 1: At the time this was introduced, I believe, six weeks
Speaker 1: before build Bill Clton's first midterm elections, and it was
Speaker 1: really bold because you you outlined to America what Republicans
Speaker 1: would do if they obtained power, and ultimately Republicans went
Speaker 1: on to gain fifty four seats in the House, nine
Speaker 1: seats in the Senate. You know, looking back, why did
Speaker 1: you find that necessary at the time? What was behind that? Ironically,
Speaker 1: the one person who's written about this accurately is Chuck Schumer.
Speaker 1: That's funny, Chumber Rush No, what I actually did a
Speaker 1: press couple event with Schumer. He wrote a book, a
Speaker 1: two thousand seven on on how democracy operates. And in
Speaker 1: his book he had a chapter on the Contract with America.
Speaker 1: And he's the one person understood what we were doing.
Speaker 1: The Contract with America was actually a management tool to
Speaker 1: change the culture of the House Republican Party. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was it was it was designed to win the election,
Speaker 1: and it was something I had done with Reagan in
Speaker 1: when we had a Capital Steps event, and not only
Speaker 1: did Reagan win by the largest electoral vote margin against
Speaker 1: an incombent president in modern history, but he also carried
Speaker 1: into office a majority in the Senate, which nobody thought possible,
Speaker 1: and we won five senatorial seats by a total of
Speaker 1: seventy five thousand votes. Uh. And I think it was
Speaker 1: because they'd all come together and had this event and
Speaker 1: pledged five positive things, because I think positive matters. Uh. Then,
Speaker 1: and I think it's not enough just to be negative.
Speaker 1: So we both wanted to have an election vehicle, which
Speaker 1: is what the contract was at one level, so people
Speaker 1: would say, oh, if I vote for you, you'll actually
Speaker 1: do positive things. And I'm personally convinced that if we'd
Speaker 1: run a traditional Republican negative campaign, we'd have gained twenty
Speaker 1: five or thirty seats, but we would not have gained
Speaker 1: a majority. Uh. The way it worked, we actually ended
Speaker 1: up gaining fifty four seats. UH. And that was in
Speaker 1: part because, um, we competed everywhere, and it was in
Speaker 1: part because we had this positive vision, which you could
Speaker 1: feel in the candidates. I mean, a candidate who has
Speaker 1: a positive future just feels different than a candidate who's
Speaker 1: angry and negative and only I can't do anything but attack.
Speaker 1: But the second reason we did it was when we
Speaker 1: won the majority, we did not want to become a
Speaker 1: normal party. We didn't want people to show up and say, oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do now, get captured by the
Speaker 1: lobbyists and the Georgetown social set, go from cocktail party
Speaker 1: to cocktail party and become useless. So we agreed than
Speaker 1: in the first hundred days we would vote on ten
Speaker 1: big items, and the effort it took to get everybody
Speaker 1: lined up to actually keep our word, made us I
Speaker 1: think for about three years, almost four years, a dramatically
Speaker 1: different party than we had been before or that we've
Speaker 1: been since then. So in part, I would argue that
Speaker 1: you you want to have some kind of positive commitment
Speaker 1: that forces your members to actually do what they promised
Speaker 1: to do, or they'll cynically win an election. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in the tradition of Robert Redford and the candidate at
Speaker 1: the very end when he wins, he says, you know, what,
Speaker 1: what do we do now? Because he had you know,
Speaker 1: he was just a candidate. He hadn't thought about actually
Speaker 1: trying to govern. And I think you've got to have
Speaker 1: a movement that wants to fix America's problems, not just
Speaker 1: a movement that wants to hold power, you know. But
Speaker 1: I mean that takes a lot of force. I and
Speaker 1: that takes a lot of boldness to sort of put
Speaker 1: that out there and and to and make that kind
Speaker 1: of contract with the country. Do you think does the
Speaker 1: Republican Party today have that boldness and that foresight. Well,
Speaker 1: I think Kevin McCarthy does. He had a he had
Speaker 1: a commitment to America. Uh. In two thousand and interestingly, UM,
Speaker 1: people thought the Republicans in the House, we're gonna lose
Speaker 1: twenty five seats. They actually gained fifteen. I mean that's
Speaker 1: a swing of forty seats and expectations. Uh. Every seat
Speaker 1: that they picked up they won with either a minority
Speaker 1: member or a woman in some cases a woman who
Speaker 1: was a minority member because he had he'd gone out
Speaker 1: and he recruited to diversify the Republican Party and to
Speaker 1: have a broader based Republican Party. Uh. And I know
Speaker 1: and in my talking with Kevin that he absolutely understands
Speaker 1: us and wants to move in this direction. I think
Speaker 1: the senate's a harder sell. Uh, partly because you know,
Speaker 1: in the Senate you only have a handful of races
Speaker 1: that are really tough. Most of the Senators are not
Speaker 1: up for re election. Uh. And of the Senators who
Speaker 1: are up for re election, most are gonna win automatically.
Speaker 1: So you don't have the same reporting to the country.
Speaker 1: And this was by design of the founding fathers that
Speaker 1: they wanted one institution to be a little bit buffered
Speaker 1: away from the country. So it's harder to convince senators
Speaker 1: that they have to actually be positive. Uh, And it's
Speaker 1: uh particularly hard if you're dealing with senators who frankly
Speaker 1: just want power to have power. So my frustration with
Speaker 1: the Republican Party right now is, um, you know, we're
Speaker 1: seeing gregious human rights abuses taking place around the world
Speaker 1: right now towards the unvaccinated, of literally creating internment camps
Speaker 1: in certain countries. New York City, you can't go into
Speaker 1: a restaurant if you are unvaccinated. And you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a vaccine that has an expiration date that
Speaker 1: you can still get and spread COVID if you get it,
Speaker 1: then that we still don't have a ton of safety
Speaker 1: data for uh. Yet this is being implemented around the world.
Speaker 1: I don't think there are enough Republicans that seem awake
Speaker 1: to what is happening in that regard personally and just
Speaker 1: the total loss of freedom. I just got a note
Speaker 1: last night. Every single Republican in the House has signed
Speaker 1: on to a resolution UH condemning and opposing Biden's effort
Speaker 1: to force private employees employers to to vaccinate, you know,
Speaker 1: to require vaccinations. UH. And I think in that sense,
Speaker 1: you've seen more and more Republicans speaking out against the
Speaker 1: entire you know, big government, police state approach to this stuff.
Speaker 1: And I think that that will continue to grow and
Speaker 1: continue to develop. I think in the Senate you've had
Speaker 1: very similar things that they had a fight the other
Speaker 1: day over insisting on having a vote on an amendment
Speaker 1: about requiring the employers UH to implement government mandates about vaccinations,
Speaker 1: and every Republican voted yes. Every Democrat voted no, which
Speaker 1: was kind of strange. But I think you're gonna see
Speaker 1: You're about to see Mansion and a couple of other
Speaker 1: senators on the Democratic side break and starts voting with
Speaker 1: the Republicans on the vaccine issue, at which point they'll
Speaker 1: start actually passing the Senate UH. And I think that
Speaker 1: they should be aggressive, you know, I think part of
Speaker 1: it is UH and And I'm in the middle of
Speaker 1: reading three different books on the UH, the COVID epidemic,
Speaker 1: and UM. It's hard to overstate how confusing and how
Speaker 1: badly informed the public health community was and how often
Speaker 1: they told people that was simply not true. UH. And
Speaker 1: I think that that has only now are our political
Speaker 1: leaders beginning to realize how much that they have been misled. UH.
Speaker 1: And I think that they overreach by Biden, and by
Speaker 1: Cuomo and by others is beginning to really awaken people
Speaker 1: up to the idea that you know, you you can't
Speaker 1: live your whole life, uh worried about one particular flool
Speaker 1: flo like disease, And it's going to turn out in
Speaker 1: the long run, the coronavirus is going to be like
Speaker 1: the flu. In fact, we will lose, will lose. I
Speaker 1: think we'll lose more people to flu than we will
Speaker 1: to to COVID in two thousand twenty two or two
Speaker 1: thou see, I think it's bigger than that, because I'm
Speaker 1: not a scientist, right, but even back in you know
Speaker 1: what was a March of twenty earlier than that, basically
Speaker 1: right after whether April was the fifteen days to slow
Speaker 1: the spread. I was reading stuff by Dr Ian Edis,
Speaker 1: who was outlining basically what you just said, that this
Speaker 1: is likely not as bad as what we think. You
Speaker 1: you could look at surveys even at the beginning or
Speaker 1: study is showing that the majority of people going into hospitalizations. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're saying at home, So so we have known quite
Speaker 1: you know, almost this entire time that we were being
Speaker 1: lied to. I just feel like sometimes Republicans sort of
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork for the left as opposed to just
Speaker 1: being bold and brave when it mattered. Because now this
Speaker 1: we've we've already become consumed by these vaccine mandates, consumed
Speaker 1: by the messaging, and Republicans were part of that in
Speaker 1: earlier on and telling everyone to go get vaccinated and
Speaker 1: simply just leaving it to Americans to make their own decisions,
Speaker 1: or even with police shooting, sort of going along and
Speaker 1: saying we need police reform, despite if you look at
Speaker 1: the numbers, it just simply wasn't there that somehow it
Speaker 1: was open season on you know, black people in America.
Speaker 1: That was always a lie. So I just feel like
Speaker 1: sometimes Republicans sort of lack the braveness and the ability
Speaker 1: to fight back when it matters the most, and they
Speaker 1: sort of lay the groundwork for the left. And Trump
Speaker 1: was probably you know, one of the few recently who
Speaker 1: was different in that regard of just rejecting false premises
Speaker 1: from the beginning. Well, I look, I think first of all,
Speaker 1: Trump has been the most effective anti left politician in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. I don't think he's a conservative in the
Speaker 1: William Buckley National Review sense, but I think if your
Speaker 1: interest is breaking up the left. Nobody has done a
Speaker 1: better job than up in my lifetime, not not Reagan,
Speaker 1: not anybody. Uh. Second, um, I think you almost have
Speaker 1: to be Trump's size, you know, with with millions of followers, uh,
Speaker 1: with with the ability to generate noise the way he does,
Speaker 1: in order to do some of the stuff. If you're
Speaker 1: a uh and and there's a real balance you've got
Speaker 1: you know that even a guy like Reagan had to
Speaker 1: follow because you can. You can. You have to select
Speaker 1: which fights you're gonna pick with the media so that
Speaker 1: you don't end up looking like you're a cookie. Because
Speaker 1: the media will hate you, uh. And it's okay for
Speaker 1: them to hate you on one or two things, but
Speaker 1: if they hate you on seven things, they'll begin to
Speaker 1: to erode your ability to be seen as effective. So
Speaker 1: it's it's always a balancing act. I think that the
Speaker 1: larger picture of the elites, not just in the US
Speaker 1: but around the world, uh, exploiting COVID as an opportunity
Speaker 1: need to dramatically expand government. I think that's beginning to
Speaker 1: sink in, and I think there will be a very
Speaker 1: deep reaction to it, and that in the end, in fact,
Speaker 1: government will end up being smaller, not larger, because the
Speaker 1: average American is going to be so deeply distrustful of
Speaker 1: the bureaucracies and and so convinced that it just doesn't work.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the other part. Had had all this
Speaker 1: stuff worked, had you know, had COVID been solved, had
Speaker 1: the school's actually educated people, had had we actually had
Speaker 1: safety in the streets, I think you'd have one attitude.
Speaker 1: But people are normal. Everyday people look around and wait
Speaker 1: a second, the murder rates going up dramatically, The schools
Speaker 1: aren't working, and we have another wave of of COVID
Speaker 1: variant because the strategy was the wrong strategy. Once you've
Speaker 1: got to focus on, I think, is therapeutics and accepting
Speaker 1: the idea that when people do get sick, what you
Speaker 1: want to do is maximize their ability to survive and recover,
Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to contain it through through a
Speaker 1: vaccination only strategy. And it's very clear in retrospect that
Speaker 1: the public health people deliberately i wanted to minimize therapeutics
Speaker 1: because they wanted to force people to become vaccinated. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out when you're dealing with a rapidly mutating
Speaker 1: uh system, that last year's vaccine maybe of no value,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to be able to force the
Speaker 1: whole world into getting vaccinated every single year. People are
Speaker 1: just playing gunner rebel. And in Europe you see this
Speaker 1: number is they're very, very big demonstrations in a number
Speaker 1: of European countries against the government because the government has
Speaker 1: now been identified as the enforcer of authoritarian rules that
Speaker 1: affect my body, they don't just affect my pocketbook. Well,
Speaker 1: And I also think the differences. You know, if you
Speaker 1: look at something like the measles or polio, they confer
Speaker 1: lifetime immunity, whereas this looks like it's an every six
Speaker 1: month thing. So people are like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: not the high risk or I have natural immunity. I
Speaker 1: really don't want to inject something my body that we
Speaker 1: don't have a ton of data for every six months
Speaker 1: for you know, god knows how long, right, especially when
Speaker 1: it's not stopping the spread. But you know, I think
Speaker 1: one thing I admired about President Trump was just this
Speaker 1: rejection of false premises, because if you look at before him,
Speaker 1: it was people like Romney, who you know, when he
Speaker 1: was questioned about the war on women and all these
Speaker 1: bogus uh you know, fallacy is that were being pushed
Speaker 1: by the left and the media. He would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I had buying it is full of what right. He
Speaker 1: would just completely accept the false premise and play into it,
Speaker 1: whereas Trump would just be like, that's a dumb question next,
Speaker 1: you know. So it was just sort of like changed
Speaker 1: the game in terms of how we deal with the media,
Speaker 1: sort of pushing back against uh, you know, these propaganda
Speaker 1: wars that they're always waging on us. I think that's
Speaker 1: why I'd say two things about that. One, Um, if
Speaker 1: you're Mit Romney and you were governor of Massachusetts for
Speaker 1: four years and before that you lived in Massachusetts, you're
Speaker 1: just you're surrounded by all these people. And this is
Speaker 1: not a bat negative about mid You're just surrounded by
Speaker 1: all these people who are cuckoo. Uh and you know,
Speaker 1: being cuckoo and Boston as normal. Uh So, things that
Speaker 1: when you were talking over coffee or yes, as as
Speaker 1: a Mormon, he wasn't drinking coffee, when you're talking over
Speaker 1: hot chocolate. Uh. You know, things that people were saying.
Speaker 1: You'd hear it so often you think, Gosh, I guess
Speaker 1: that's okay. Uh. Trump's great ability is that he knows
Speaker 1: what he believes. Uh, He's thought about it for a
Speaker 1: long time. He's actually not automatically a New Yorker or
Speaker 1: anything else. He's a person who has uh done business
Speaker 1: and lived all around the world. Uh, and he has
Speaker 1: formed his own opinions, and he actually knows from his
Speaker 1: own experience in New York dealing with Page six and
Speaker 1: with the gossip columns, etcetera, that there's no particular reason
Speaker 1: to believe, uh that the news media is right and
Speaker 1: he's wrong. So he's happy. He's the most cheerful person
Speaker 1: about taking on the news media that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And he's so bru alliant, uh coming up with things
Speaker 1: like fake news um as a term. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just close. And I went to a remarkable museum of
Speaker 1: of of Egyptian artifacts uh in Turn, Italy. I mean
Speaker 1: you would not expect Turn to have the second largest
Speaker 1: Egyptian collection outside of Egypt. But in the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: a guy from Turn had gathered up all this stuff
Speaker 1: tried to sell it to the Louver. They wouldn't pay
Speaker 1: him enough, so he gave it to the government, and
Speaker 1: in turn and they opened this amazing museum and close
Speaker 1: and I were going through it with his tour guide
Speaker 1: and we get to one point he says, you see
Speaker 1: that statue over there, people will tell you X, but
Speaker 1: that's fake news. And I thought to myself, I'm standing
Speaker 1: in turn, Italy looking at an Egyptian collection with an
Speaker 1: Italian guide who's using Donald Trump's language. Uh, And it
Speaker 1: was just to me a stunning example of how much
Speaker 1: Trump had penetrated the world culture, saying, you know, let's
Speaker 1: go break and in science around the world that that
Speaker 1: also seems to inspire in the but not in the
Speaker 1: part we actually that. That's sort of too to me, No, no,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not fair. I give Joe Biden enormous
Speaker 1: credit for making Let's Go brand in a worldwide term.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, and I can't imagine what the
Speaker 1: term would be for com But doesn't that say something
Speaker 1: like I feel like almost because you look at Let's Go,
Speaker 1: Brandon and you look at literally so I think I
Speaker 1: was watching like my dad was watching on Thanksgiving, which
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not a big soccer fans. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure and he's not either, so I'm not sure. Why.
Speaker 1: I think he just wanted to watch sports. But and
Speaker 1: they were saying, let's it's just it's everywhere around the
Speaker 1: country and it's global as well. Do you think we're
Speaker 1: sort of downplaying the significance of that because it almost
Speaker 1: seems like this massive grassroots movement that is intentionally being ignored. Well,
Speaker 1: it is, And of course the somebody wrote a brilliant
Speaker 1: essay that then pointed out, let's go Brandon is as
Speaker 1: much against the news media as it is against Biden.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's it was. It was a crowd chanting
Speaker 1: and it was misinterpreted, as you remember, by this NBC
Speaker 1: reporter who was trying to pretend that they weren't saying
Speaker 1: what they were saying, and so she said, oh, they're
Speaker 1: saying let's go Brandon because Brandon was the the driver
Speaker 1: who just won the race. That caught on instantly, and
Speaker 1: it was as much mocking the news media for lying
Speaker 1: about what people were saying as it was mocking Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: And there's a great cartoon where somebody had Jill saying,
Speaker 1: please quit saying that he now thinks his name is Brandon.
Speaker 1: I saw that. That's funny, you know, So sir, you've
Speaker 1: I mean you've dealt with the media, right, you were
Speaker 1: in political office at the you know, some of the
Speaker 1: highest levels. Uh, you've dealt with this for a long time.
Speaker 1: You've observed it as a historian as well. Has the
Speaker 1: media always been this corrupt? You know? It's interesting John
Speaker 1: McCann and I shared the distinction of being listed on
Speaker 1: television as our dash media rather than our home state. Uh,
Speaker 1: the because we both were on media so much. Uh No,
Speaker 1: it hasn't always been this corrupt. I think I think
Speaker 1: that it what happened was the left. The left believes
Speaker 1: in a series of lies. I always tell people, if
Speaker 1: you want to understand the Left, imagine that they saw
Speaker 1: The Lion King as a documentary and they actually believe
Speaker 1: the lions and Zebras sing and dance together, which both
Speaker 1: explains how they try to handle Putin and jij and
Speaker 1: ping and also why they're constantly out of touch with reality. Well,
Speaker 1: the challenge on the left is what they believe is
Speaker 1: a lie, and you have to prop up a lie
Speaker 1: every single day, and because it's a lie, you end
Speaker 1: up having to say things that they're simply plain not true. Now,
Speaker 1: the news media was always I would say, uh, cynical
Speaker 1: uh and and was partly because it's covering human beings
Speaker 1: and that tends to can lead one to cynicism. But
Speaker 1: if you go back and look at that, uh say,
Speaker 1: the Front Page, which was both a play and then
Speaker 1: a terrific movie in the thirties, and it's been remade
Speaker 1: two or three times since then. I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of cynicism among the reporters. Uh and and uh
Speaker 1: h l Mencken was as trenchant a social observer has
Speaker 1: ever wrote for a newspaper. And and he's writing in
Speaker 1: the twenties and thirties uh and is amazingly insightful and
Speaker 1: at the same time uh giving you his opinion and
Speaker 1: his biases. But I think what happened was the idealism
Speaker 1: of the early sixties when they were covering the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: they were covering the civil rights movement. Uh. That gradually
Speaker 1: began to give way to a group think. And it's
Speaker 1: part of what what theater was writing about. That if
Speaker 1: if you in order to be acceptable with the New
Speaker 1: York Times today, and I asked this of a great
Speaker 1: reporter who's now writing books about um, Alex Barnson who's
Speaker 1: writes writes books now about things like COVID and the
Speaker 1: Group think in the degree to which it's a lie.
Speaker 1: And I asked Alex as he was in the ninety
Speaker 1: nineties a terrific reporter at the New York Times, and
Speaker 1: he said he could not work at the Times today,
Speaker 1: that he's not left wing enough and he's not willing
Speaker 1: to walk around a lie about what he believes, and
Speaker 1: so the Time simply would find him unacceptable. And I
Speaker 1: think that we see that happening with the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: You see it happening with NBC and CBS and with
Speaker 1: the others. Although we're about to see an interesting experiment,
Speaker 1: CNN is doing so badly in terms of its ratings
Speaker 1: that the new team is taking over from the Discovery
Speaker 1: Channel has said that they want to return it to
Speaker 1: being a news channel rather than an opinion channel, and
Speaker 1: that will be a very interesting experiment if they actually
Speaker 1: can pull it off, and it will be a wrenching
Speaker 1: blow to the culture of the CNN system as it
Speaker 1: currently exists. Quick break more speaker New Gingrich author Beyond
Speaker 1: Biden after the break, Why I do believe group thinks
Speaker 1: he shoot a problem right now that was the whole
Speaker 1: point of really this podcast and just thinking we have
Speaker 1: a crisis of a lack of critical thinking in the
Speaker 1: country right now. You know, sir, do you think President
Speaker 1: Trump runs again? Well, I think he's been very clear
Speaker 1: to and we've had this conversation, but with everybody, I
Speaker 1: know that if his health is good enough, he'll run,
Speaker 1: but he will not run if his doctor thinks that
Speaker 1: he is entering his health problems. He he's very aware
Speaker 1: of how fragile and how embarrassing Joe Biden is, and
Speaker 1: he has and he's not that much younger than Biden,
Speaker 1: and he has no interest in ending up winning and
Speaker 1: serving uh. Sort of a guy who's lost it and
Speaker 1: can't do it very well. At the same time, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't think he would run if he was convinced
Speaker 1: he to lose. You know, you could. You can lose once,
Speaker 1: and you can you can say it was stolen and
Speaker 1: you can blame people, but if you lose twice as
Speaker 1: a repudiation, So I think he has to have to
Speaker 1: criteria a belief that he could win, uh, and a
Speaker 1: belief that he will physically be able to serve out
Speaker 1: four years UH and do so with with mental acuity.
Speaker 1: If those two things are there, I think that he
Speaker 1: will he will run, and my guess is he'll be
Speaker 1: the nominee. I can't imagine anybody who could take him,
Speaker 1: partly because you know, you'd end up in a debate
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump on the stage and he would annihilate you.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's nobody who's going to debate Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Uh and and and win the debate. Still remember the
Speaker 1: line just roseio' Donald. Uh. You know, if if not Trump,
Speaker 1: is it de Santis? Well, I think if not Trump
Speaker 1: is wide open. De Santis is one of the front runners. Uh, Pompeo, Pennce,
Speaker 1: Nicky Haley. Um, the number of people who would show
Speaker 1: up and run would be astonishing. Uh. You'd have three
Speaker 1: or four senators, three or four governors, a couple of
Speaker 1: cabinet officers. So the field would be a little bit
Speaker 1: like two thousand and fifteen when they were I think
Speaker 1: sixteen people running. Uh. And DeSantis would certainly have huge advantages.
Speaker 1: He's been a very effective governor. But but I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people might decide to show
Speaker 1: up and play, and uh, you can't you can't tell
Speaker 1: until they get out there. For a while, who's going
Speaker 1: to have staying power and who's going to actually connect
Speaker 1: with the American people. I mean, if not trumpets de
Speaker 1: Santis for me, I just I I think he is
Speaker 1: the best politician. I mean I literally moved to Florida
Speaker 1: because of him and the fact that I left New
Speaker 1: York City, communist New York City to move to freedom
Speaker 1: here in Florida. Best decision I've ever made. He's a
Speaker 1: remarkable governor. Uh. You know so, So if not Trump
Speaker 1: De Santis for me, I'll say it now. I don't care,
Speaker 1: but it you know. So, looking ahead for the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: looking at the mid terms and beyond, what does that
Speaker 1: look like for Republicans? What does that future look like?
Speaker 1: One thing is almost certain and one thing that we
Speaker 1: don't know that there's certain almost certainty is that they're
Speaker 1: going to win control of the House and probably pick
Speaker 1: up seats in the Senate. I think that uh. And
Speaker 1: I've written about this at Kingiver sixty in a series
Speaker 1: of newsletters. I think you're facing not not just a wave,
Speaker 1: but a tsunami because I think when you go out
Speaker 1: and you ask people, uh, and we just did a video.
Speaker 1: Uh the runs about three minutes in which we talk
Speaker 1: about the big government socialism isn't working. I mean you
Speaker 1: can go stand by any gas station in America and
Speaker 1: as people fill up their car, asked them, you know,
Speaker 1: do you think this is working? And they're gonna say no.
Speaker 1: So I think we're gonna win in twenty two, probably
Speaker 1: by a huge margin. And the question then is can
Speaker 1: we govern? I mean, just being the anti Biden party
Speaker 1: is not a formula for long term majority, and frankly,
Speaker 1: more importantly, it's not a formula for solving America's problems.
Speaker 1: And we have really big problems, and we could be
Speaker 1: in real danger of losing the country, both in competition
Speaker 1: with China and in this general decay of our civilization.
Speaker 1: And I think that solving those problems is huge, and
Speaker 1: the Republican Party has to become the vehicle for solving them.
Speaker 1: And it's it's easier right now for me to see
Speaker 1: how we can win than it is for me to
Speaker 1: see how we become a dynamic, creative problem solving party.
Speaker 1: That's a lot bigger change than just winning. Are those
Speaker 1: problems solvable? Sure of course they are. We're a great country,
Speaker 1: and look if you could survive in eight years taking
Speaker 1: on the British Empire when you were a tiny country
Speaker 1: down at one point to about people in the army
Speaker 1: that that were effective. Uh and and in the end
Speaker 1: we won. UH. If you're a country that could survive
Speaker 1: a brutal civil war in which six d twenty thousand
Speaker 1: Americans were old. And if you're a country which could
Speaker 1: simultaneously take on Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan
Speaker 1: uh and then spend almost fifty years defeating the Soviet Empire. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't see any you know, I have. I have
Speaker 1: a really simple test. There are a lot more people
Speaker 1: trying to get in and are trying to get out.
Speaker 1: So are We're still a very desirable country with a
Speaker 1: great future, and we still attract an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: talent uh and Um. As long as those things are true,
Speaker 1: unless unless we just work overtime through government to screw
Speaker 1: it up, we are probably going to be the most
Speaker 1: powerful and most dynamic country in the world. And and
Speaker 1: only the immediate ten or twenty years. The danger of
Speaker 1: North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China, nuclear war, Islamic terrorism,
Speaker 1: those are the only things that worry me. If we
Speaker 1: if we figure out how to get past them. We will,
Speaker 1: in fact, by the end of the century once again
Speaker 1: be the center of freedom, and I suspect freedom will
Speaker 1: be spreading across the planet goes on balance, most people
Speaker 1: actually would rather be free than be slave to some
Speaker 1: tolitary and dictator. See, sir, we needed your wisdom. So
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm so, I'm glad to have you to
Speaker 1: be able to, you know, look back on history and
Speaker 1: really examine this for all of us and give these
Speaker 1: honest and astute answers. I just want to say, at least,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of what you've done. I'm very excited
Speaker 1: by your your abilities, and your passion and your commitment
Speaker 1: to America. Well, that's an honor coming from you, sir,
Speaker 1: So I have an utmost amount of respect for you.
Speaker 1: Beyond Biden is out. You know, anything else you want
Speaker 1: to leave us with before we go, sir, no, I
Speaker 1: would say the last of the first stanza of our
Speaker 1: national anthem, the Land of the Free and the home
Speaker 1: of the brave. As long as we're brave, we will
Speaker 1: be free. I love that, speaker, New Gingrich, complete honor.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time, sir, Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for coming on the show. Thank you m H.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Speaker new Gingridge for a great interview,
Speaker 1: and I want to thank you guys at home for listening.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy today's show, please leave us a review,
Speaker 1: rate us five stars on Apple Podcast. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, at least and rebooth. Thanks
Speaker 1: to our team Producer John Cassio, executive producers Debbie Myers,
Speaker 1: and Speaker new Gingridge, all part of the Gangridge three
Speaker 1: sixty network and team